Author: Hawes Spencer

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Longo’s legacy: Cameras coming to a mall and cop near you

Surveillance video images helped lead to the arrest of Jesse Matthew, who pleaded guilty last week to murdering UVA student Hannah Graham, after footage showed he was with her the night she disappeared. Tuel Jewelers’ Mary Loose DeViney says she shares images from the store’s video surveillance with the police department but would cease to if she learned the images were being used for something other than police investigations.

Much to the dismay of a local civil libertarian, outgoing Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo will finally get the surveillance cameras on the Downtown Mall he’s long desired.

Hardware estimates fell from their previous high of $300,000, and the police surveillance system nine years in the making has finally won the support of City Council. In a February 16 voice vote, Council asked Longo to seek proposals after he said public cameras might cost less than $74,000.

“This is way less,” said Councilor Kristin Szakos. “It eases a lot of my objections.”

But cost isn’t the end of the objections.

“The key here, and what our City Council should be considering is: How can we protect the rights of citizens?” says John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit that wages legal battles to protect civil liberties.

However, because courts routinely rule that there’s no expectation of privacy in public places, Whitehead concedes that cameras are coming—and at a price beyond the $74K in hardware and $1,200 in monthly operating costs.

“People will start being very careful about what they say in public,” says Whitehead, noting that lip-reading software can now decipher the dialogue from silent recordings.

But not everyone shares Whitehead’s concerns. “When you’re in a public space, there is no privacy anymore,” says merchant Joan Fenton, a longtime advocate for the cameras and co-chair of the Downtown Business Association.

Still, Whitehead worries that the ensuing images could be used to blackmail someone or find their way into civil litigation such as divorce proceedings. He also doubts that Charlottesville citizens would remain willing to chalk their anti-government protests on the First Amendment monument under the gaze of a government camera.

“These things,” says Whitehead, “are going to alter our behavior.”

In his recent pitch for 36 cameras perched on light poles spanning the eight blocks between the Omni hotel and the nTelos Wireless Pavilion, Longo tried to assuage such concerns.

“We have no desire or expectation of going in to randomly view images without any specific law enforcement purpose,” Longo said. “We would go to these images in the aftermath of an event in an effort to help us solve an incident that has already occurred.”

There’s little doubt that surveillance cameras led to the capture of Jesse Matthew, the man who pleaded guilty last week to murdering University of Virginia student Hannah Graham, who crossed paths with Matthew on the Downtown Mall in 2014. Those cameras, however, were private.

“I would argue for cameras—private cameras first, public cameras second,” says Mary Loose DeViney, whose store’s video footage helped identify Matthew.

DeViney says her store, Tuel Jewelers, freely feeds low-resolution imagery directly to the police department, but she says she’d cease the flow if she were to learn of improper snooping. She contends that leaving cameras in private hands saves money and provides a useful check on government abuse.

“The devil’s in the details,” says DeViney.

A year ago, Longo, who retires May 1, promised to develop, in consultation with civil rights organizations, policies on the storage and use of the ensuing images. But Whitehead’s Rutherford Institute reports it has not been consulted, and a reporter’s question to Longo about the status of such consultations went unanswered by press time. (Citing time constraints, Longo declined to be interviewed for this story, except by e-mail.)

“I feel comfortable speaking for your next chief”—Longo assured Council on the topic of snooping—“that it would not be a policy consistent with law enforcement best practices.”

While mall cameras move forward, body cameras have already arrived. Just as the push for mall surveillance preceded the Matthew-Graham murder investigation, Longo has told Council that the department’s push for body cameras was already in the works before last year’s spate of taped police shootings of unarmed Americans.

“We have not chosen to go down this path in light of national events,” Longo told Council. “We actually started going down this path because our in-car camera system was manufacturer discontinued, and we couldn’t get it fixed.”

A City Hall official provided a reporter with a five-year contract showing Charlottesville will spend $272,357 for 100 body cameras and related software, hardware, training and storage. Longo told Council the system will be deployed by late spring or early summer.

Whitehead, who has written two books on the expansion of government surveillance, predicts that mall cameras may succeed in invading privacy without actually reducing crime.

“They displace crime to areas where there are no cameras,” says Whitehead. “So if you’re going to be effective in these programs, eventually you’re going to have to have cameras on every street corner.”

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Shattered Glass? Kroboth’s name change lands him in jail

Kurt Kroboth found his name “inconvenient and embarrassing,” he said on a name change application. Photo courtesy of the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail

If Kurt Kroboth was hoping for a better life with a new identity in California, the ex-convict received a painful surprise last week when he was arrested for a parole violation that may, ironically, have stemmed from something he put on his name change application.

Kroboth is being held (under that name) without bond at the Martinez Detention Facility, according to an automated information system for Contra Costa County.

It was Kroboth’s sworn assertion on his name change application that he was not under the control of the California parole system that raised eyebrows, according to a California official, speaking on background.

Albemarle prosecutor Jon Zug, who prosecuted Kroboth for two parole violations, called Kroboth’s sworn statement “very interesting.”

Kroboth was convicted of attempted murder in 2006 after breaking into his estranged wife’s home and attacking her while wearing a vampire mask. She survived the encounter by fighting off the attacker, but testimony indicated that Kroboth, captured less than a mile away, was found with latex gloves, chloroform and a knife. The phone and power lines to the house had been disconnected.

According to Kroboth’s name change application, which was filed in March, his old name had become “inconvenient and embarrassing.” In May, Contra Costa Superior Court granted him a new one: Oscar M. Glass, with the initials, O.M.G.

Kroboth is a changed man and deserves to be free of his past, says a Richmond, California, woman who describes herself as his girlfriend. She asked not to be identified over concerns that her children wouldn’t understand.

“He’s paid and paid and paid,” says the woman. “He’s a 60-year-old man just trying to get through life.”

She says the Columbia-educated financier, who formerly earned a six-figure income, has been living modestly, renting a single room in a suburban house in the Bay Area city of Hercules.

“The person I know is pretty humble, modest and slow to get upset,” says the girlfriend, who says they met on an online dating site.

“Before three dates, he told me his entire story,” she says. “He didn’t try to twist the situation or make up excuses for himself.”

She wishes that America would emulate the European concept of the “right to be left alone” because Kroboth has become a model citizen, a man who volunteers fitness instruction at a senior center and helped repair her house.

While in prison, she says Kroboth assisted fellow inmates in getting their GEDs as he worked through his own issues with anger-management classes, medication and psychotherapy. He’s now practicing Buddhism.

Last Thursday, Kroboth’s probation officer called the girlfriend to pick up his briefcase, phone and car. The arrest has destroyed his most recent career as a tutor, she says.

“He had a tutoring client later on the day he was arrested and another one Monday. They’re going to think he flaked out, and I’m afraid he’s going to have lost all of his livelihood.”

Albemarle prosecutor Zug says he knew of about Kroboth’s planned name change before it happened and did not object because he knew it would just be a matter of time before the press found out.

“It’s gonna be back online, so anyone who Googles Oscar Glass will be referred back to Kurt Kroboth,” says Zug. “I knew it would be a waste of Kurt Kroboth’s time and money.”

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Oscar M. Glass: OMG—Kurt Kroboth gets a new name

Kurt Kroboth found his name “inconvenient and embarrassing,” he said on a name change application. Photo courtesy of the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail

Kurt Kroboth, a convicted would-be wife killer who was bothered by lingering notoriety over his Albemarle crimes, has convinced a California judge to change his identity. Following a hearing in early May, the Superior Court of Contra Costa County entered a decree giving Kroboth a new name: Oscar Michel Glass.

“Only on the left coast,” says David Heilberg, a legal analyst who once represented Glass. “I can’t imagine Virginia doing this.”

As it turns out, however, the commonwealth puts few hurdles between a violent felon and a new identity. Two years ago, after convicted rapist Jeffrey Theodore Kitze found Charlottesville women rejecting his social entreaties, he convinced a judge in nearby Buckingham County to give him the much less distinctive name of Jeffrey Ted Miller.

Such identity adjustments worry victim rights advocate Camille Cooper.

“The public has a right to know,” says Cooper. “I have a 25-year-old daughter, and I would want her to know.”

The Kitze-to-Miller name change, approved by Circuit Judge Kimberly S. White in 2013, prompted Delegate Rob Bell to win passage of a bill the following year that scrutinizes name changes by convicted sex offenders. Glass, however, was not classified as a sex offender, and he no longer lives in Virginia.

Now 60 and residing near the San Francisco Bay in the city of Hercules, the former financier with an MBA from Columbia currently assists students in math, French and standardized test preparation. When Oscar Glass, whose new initials are O.M.G., was reached by a reporter, he said it was not a good time to talk, and multiple phone calls went unreturned.

“Oscar is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met,” says satisfied customer “Zachary” in an online review. “My mother and I were looking for a last-minute, low-budget tutor before my ACT and were lucky to find Oscar.”

Hermes Tutoring, as Glass calls his company, borrows a name from the youthful messenger god known in mythology for transporting souls to the afterlife. Evidence suggests that in 2004, Glass had something similar in mind for his estranged wife.

On Halloween night, wearing a vampire mask, toting a knife and wearing latex gloves, he disabled telephone and electric lines to the house where she was sleeping and attempted to subdue her with a chloroform-soaked cloth, according to Albemarle Circuit Court records. His plot failed when she awakened and fought him off as he tried to hurl her into a two-story foyer.

The prosecutor noted that Glass had previously attempted to hire a hitman to avoid paying his wife’s court-ordered $6,000 per month divorce settlement. Pleading guilty, he was convicted of attempted murder, as well as breaking and entering.

Initially released from prison in 2011, Glass sent a registered letter the following year to this journalist contending that “spectacularized” articles at readthehook.com, the website for a now-defunct weekly newspaper, constituted an “ongoing attack” on his reputation. In lieu of deleting the articles, he recommended adding a line of code to prevent indexing by search engines.

While the so-called “right to be forgotten” has recently gained traction in European Union efforts against Google, it’s anathema to information disseminators such as Waldo Jaquith.

“It’s 2015, and you can’t just outrun your reputation,” says Jaquith, who wonders why the California judge, who also waived Glass’ court costs, would grant a new name to a violent felon.

“I wonder,” says Jaquith, “if the judge is not aware of his history or just didn’t care.”

Repeated calls to Contra Costa Judge John H. Sugiyama were unreturned.

Correction 8/18/15: The original story misstated Glass’ middle name, Michel, because of a typo on a probation letter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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‘Bad dream’: Jesse Matthew victim tells how assault affected her

Prosecutor Ray Morrogh comforts Gil Harrington. Photo: Hawes Spencer

“I felt utterly helpless,” she said. “I feared this was to be the end of my life.”

A rapt Fairfax courtroom gave the woman attacked by Jesse L. Matthew Jr. a chance to convey the terror he inflicted, testimony that could play a role in putting Matthew behind bars for life.

The 33-year-old Charlottesville man has been charged with capital murder in last year’s death of University of Virginia student Hannah Graham. But it was his decade-ago actions that were the focus of the June 18 hearing.

Publicly described only by her initials, R.G. said that September 24, 2005, initially seemed like “just another happy sunny day” before the then 26-year-old encountered a stranger as she walked home from a neighborhood grocery store.

Dressed for court in a crisp lavender blue shirt with her dark hair tied in a ponytail, the woman spoke calmly, with a petite physical appearance in stark contrast to Matthew, clad in a prison jumpsuit and seemingly three times her weight.

“You’re thinking this is a bad dream and this is not happening to you,” she testified. “I was black and blue. My nose was bleeding. I had trouble walking. Everything was hurting.”

The coming years, she said, were worse. She spent days unable to get out of bed.

“I basically had stopped living,” she said. “You’re suffering, so you don’t want to get up.”

Throughout the 10-minute hearing, R.G. never once stared at Matthew, seated beside his two attorneys.

“I have carried that memory with me even though it went into cold storage,” she testified. “It is worse than losing someone close because you find yourself in this vicious cycle of self-hatred.”

Neither of Matthew’s parents, who typically attend his Charlottesville court proceedings, were in the courtroom Thursday. His sister, declining comment, asked the media to leave the family alone.

The victim’s testimony will likely affect the judge’s sentencing decision in October, according to legal analyst David Heilberg.

“If it was moving testimony,” says Heilberg, “it will move the judge.”

Afterwards, prosecutor Ray Morrogh gave an opinion on Matthew.

“Even after 37 years in this business, I still believe most people are good, but some people are very, very bad, and he’s one of them.”

The trial, held earlier this month, ended abruptly when Matthew convicted himself by offering an Alford plea to the charges of abduction, sexual penetration and attempted murder. By that time, testimony had already shown that his DNA was found under one of R.G.’s fingernails.

Now living in her native India, R.G. says she returned to the U.S., where she’d studied, in order to protect future victims. Her efforts won the gratitude of Gil Harrington, the mother of Morgan Harrington, a college student whose body was found five years ago in a cow field after she disappeared from a Charlottesville concert and who has been linked to Matthew.

“It’s only once in a rare while—once in a very long while—that an exceptional human being becomes the hero of a sexual assault,” says Harrington. “R.G. is one such exceptional human being.”

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UVA spending $450K to give Rotunda that ’70s look

The copper-topped Rotunda is getting a paint job. Photo: Laura Wagner

The Rotunda is the central structure of University of Virginia’s present and past. It’s a neoclassical architectural masterpiece designed by the founder, Thomas Jefferson, that has become so revered that the UN named it a World Heritage Site. And now, as part of a $52-million renovation, it’s getting a rooftop paint job costing over $450,000.

The irony is that the paint will cover copper, a metal that can last 100 years uncoated and which seems to gain little from paint but maintenance issues, according to general contractor Kevin Stevens.

“I think it’s pretty stupid,” he says. “It is akin to painting mahogany furniture or putting wall-to-wall carpet on a hardwood floor. You’re hiding the beauty of what’s already there, and you’re not making it any better.”

On that last point, Robert Weed of the Copper Development Association agrees: “The painting really does not affect the lifetime of the roof. In fact, it does often introduce a maintenance component. My guess is they will only get a 15- to 20-year life out of the coating, so they will have to go up there, scrape the coating, prepare the surface, and recoat it again.”

However, David Neuman, who recently departed his post as the university architect, defends the expenditures.

“I think that in the context of a $52-million restoration project that that’s a modest amount,” he says.

Neuman notes two reasons from history to paint it white. Number one is that the original roof was tin-coated iron, which weathers to a chalky white appearance. The second is that after the building was gutted by fire in 1895, Stanford White, the Gilded Age architect who oversaw reconstruction, recommended painting it white—something not done until 1976.

And now there’s a reason from more recent history: alumni expectations. Aaron Ojalvo, who recently lived on the Lawn as a fourth year student, understands.

“I’ve seen people that like this copper, but I think for most of us our first impression is what we keep,” he says. “When I got to UVA, it was a white dome, and I think that was the way I first internalized it and remembered it, and so I’d like to see it go back to the way I fell in love with it.”

As for Thomas Jefferson, the record shows that he delegated this construction decision to the university’s first chief executive, Arthur Brockenbrough, who obtained roofing prices for zinc, copper, as well as the cheapest option: the chosen tin-coated iron (which, incidentally, began leaking while Jefferson was still alive).

Molly Schwartzburg works nearby in the special collections library where archival photographs show an ever-evolving dome.

“It started off tin, it’s been painted white, it’s been black, it’s been all different colors over time.”

By the time of the devastating fire, at least part of its dome was painted red. That’s judging from a contemporary drawing as well as from fragments found buried during the current renovation.

Schwartzburg recalls how the university had a copper-domed Rotunda for most of the 20th century, and she felt hopeful two years ago when shiny sheets of copper were once again installed.

“When the roof first went on, I had this amazing moment of feeling like I was looking at a building in Paris from the late 18th or early 19th century, and suddenly the Rotunda felt Jeffersonian in a completely different way,” she says. “It felt like it was an artifact not just of Palladio and the classical tradition but of Jefferson’s Paris.”

Like many at UVA, Schwartzburg heard the rumor—false as it turns out—that a copper roof will stain the brick below. She was was looking forward to watching the new copper gain its a patina that would morph from black to brown to dark green to a pale green.

Says Schwartzburg: “Accepting that it’s not static, that it’s not something that’s captured in a single moment and unchanging—that’s an important element of how historical artifacts live their lives.”

If locking the dome into a permanent appearance from when disco balls and bell-bottomed pants were all the rage rubs some the wrong way, university officials point out that the chosen color, Benjamin Moore’s Swiss Coffee, will be softer than, say, refrigerator white.

UVA conservators learned how powerful alumni opinion could be in 2010 when they repainted a few columns along the Lawn in their true historic hue: a tan or sandstone color. While nearby Monticello recently did the same thing with no controversy, at UVA some alumni vowed to stop donating, and the following year the Board of Visitors demanded consultation on color choices within the Academical Village.

“The board’s really trapped in the thinking of 1976,” says Charlottesville architect Brian Broadus.

UVA’s restoration architects, such as Jody Lahendro, however, offer no complaints about the board’s decision to whiten the dome: “The Board of Visitors has directed us to paint the roof, and we shall do that.”

That painting began on Monday, June 15.

 

 

 

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Supreme Court ruling opens door for new leadership at Sweet Briar

Sweet Briar supporters filed into last week's Supreme Court of Virginia hearing. The state's top court issued a ruling within days. Photo: Christian Hommel

“Good news,” tweeted Amherst-area Delegate Ben Cline. “VA Supremes endorse our Sweet Briar argument. Back to Bedford Circuit for rehearing and hopefully injunction to stop closure!”

With its opinion rendered less than two business days after an already accelerated hearing, the Supreme Court of Virginia has sent a message, according to legal analysts, that the plight of Sweet Briar College matters.

“It’s pretty unprecedented,” says Charlottesville lawyer David Heilberg. “The Supreme Court takes just a small percentage of cases, and usually they proceed all the way through trial and final resolution before they take an appeal.”

In an opinion issued June 9, the justices held that a lower court judge erred by not finding that the controlling corporation, Sweet Briar Institute, could also be considered a trust. That’s a rebuke of arguments made by the state’s top law enforcer, and it returns the case to the circuit court of Amherst County.

Sweet Briar spokesperson Christy Jackson downplays the ruling as merely extending an existing injunction by nine days.

“It keeps hopes alive for the plaintiffs,” says Heilberg, “but it definitely wasn’t a slam dunk win.”

In issuing two temporary injunctions, the lower court judge appears to have already indicated disapproval of the college closing. In one ruling, he said students have an expectation of “workmanlike” service. In another, he refused to let the college lease horses, give away its venerable study-abroad program or take any action “facilitating” a closing without his approval.

Such moves convince the lead attorney in one lawsuit that the judge’s next move might be a trust finding.

“It would be a massive defeat for the college,” says Elliott Schuchardt. “It would hugely broaden the case.”

Schuchardt, the lawyer leading a breach-of-contract action brought by students, explains that if Sweet Briar is a trust, then students could become trust beneficiaries.

“It will destroy the attorney general’s monopoly on the case,” says Schuchardt, who joins many alumni and several elected officials in questioning the actions of Virginia’s top law enforcer, Mark Herring.

At an April hearing, Herring dispatched three lawyers to quash the first suit to preserve the college. After widespread alumnae outcry, including sign-carrying, pink-and-green protesters converging on his public events, Herring ceased courtroom interventions and began convening mediations.

Herring spokesperson Michael Kelly, who declined to provide a comment on the new ruling, attributes Herring’s decision to steer clear of the Supreme Court to his focus on the mediation. Despite such focus, including two expansive in-person sessions as well as another Herring spokesperson’s claim that the parties are “communicating productively” with a professional mediator, the effort has yielded no public resolution.

Herring’s shifting stances have also raised eyebrows in open government circles, particularly after one citizen seeking e-mails between the AG’s office and the Sweet Briar board was presented an estimate exceeding $19,000; another citizen got an estimate exceeding $40,000. After an outcry, Herring announced that all releasable documents would be made available to the public free of charge, though no documents have been released by press time.

As for Ellen Bowyer, the Amherst county attorney who brought the case to the Supreme Court, she seems ready to present evidence that the Sweet Briar leaders breached a fiduciary duty by soliciting donations while planning the closing and must continue to abide by the will of the late Indiana Fletcher Williams, whose bequest of money and land launched the college toward “perpetuity” in 1901.

Bowyer’s suit seeks continued operation of the college under a new president and new board. Now armed with a bolstered legal basis, the Supreme Court ruling gives her a second chance to convince Amherst Circuit Judge James Updike that Sweet Briar is a trust.

“I’m absolutely delighted,” says Bowyer. “It really opens the door for him to reconsider this question.”

Bowyer has requested a hearing in Bedford County, where courtroom space is plentiful, to span the dates of June 22-24. For most faculty and staff, that’s not a moment too soon. Their pink slips are dated June 30.

The original version of this post inaccurately stated students’ possible status following the ruling. According to Elliott Schuchardt they could become trust beneficiaries. —ed.

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Supreme battle: Are bondholders behind Sweet Briar’s ride to the state’s top court?

Amherst County Attorney Ellen Bowyer led the legal charge to keep Sweet Briar College open, taking the case to the Supreme Court of Virginia June 4. Photo: Christian Hommel

By now, practically everyone in academic circles has heard the official explanation—declining enrollment and revenue—for why the board of directors voted to close Sweet Briar College. Harder to understand is the follow-up question, particularly now that an alumni group claims to have raised at least $16 million: Why would any board endure three lawsuits to ensure the death of a 114-year-old women’s college?

Last Thursday, June 4, the conflict reached the Virginia Supreme Court in Richmond. There, before an over-capacity pink- and green-clad crowd, a lawyer for the case brought by Amherst County Attorney Ellen Bowyer sought to convince the panel of justices to issue an injunction to keep the college open and to run it with a special fiduciary. In the 32-minute hearing, the justices reserved their toughest questions for Woody Fowler, the lawyer representing the board.

“Why,” asked a justice, “are you contesting this so strongly?”

Denying that his side was fighting to close the school, Fowler said this was a battle for the right of the board to make its own decisions.

“You can’t step in and say, ‘Corporation, we didn’t like what you did, so we’re gonna flip it over.’”

“I’m sorry,” replied a justice, “but that sounds like an overstatement. This is just a preliminary injunction. It’s issued all the time by courts, and it freezes the situation until the court can give it a really hard and deliberative look.”

That wasn’t the last time the state’s top jurists would spar with Fowler, who alleged that an injunction forcing Sweet Briar to remain open would hasten its demise.

“You’re being asked,” said Fowler, “to allow for an orderly wind-down, or you’re being asked to allow a crash-and-burn.”

Another justice quickly responded that Fowler omitted a third option: adhering to the 1901 will by the late Indiana Fletcher Williams and keeping a women’s college alive in perpetuity.

The stings against Fowler continued when one justice pointed out that “three very well-respected professors” noted that the college could be both a corporation and a trust.

“I know you’re resting on the declaration that it is a corporation,” the justice told Fowler. “Suppose we disagree with you, and it is a trust. How can you cease the operations of the school when it is to be operated in perpetuity?”

Fowler tried to pose a question back to the bench, but he was quickly halted.

“Let’s get this straight,” said the interrupting jurist. “I ask the questions.”

So back to a big question. Why, when school-savers claim to have pledged over $16 million, does the board not simply walk away?

“Nobody understands why the hell they are doing this,” says Jay Orsi. “Ego and pride is about all I can hang it on at this point.”

Married to a Sweet Briar alum, Orsi is an Arkansas business owner whose master’s degree in business includes a concentration in finance. Last month on his blog, unsolicited.guru, he revealed how Sweet Briar President James F. Jones Jr. appears to have overstated the level of deferred maintenance on the campus by a factor of seven.

And in a sea of conspiracy theories, Orsi is the person who provides the most evidence-based explanation for the board’s decision—and its timing. By filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the issuing agency, the Amherst Industrial Development Authority, Orsi discovered that Sweet Briar’s most recent set of bonds carry certain rules, called covenants, regarding cash reserves, that the college may be on the verge of breaking.

In Thursday’s Supreme Court hearing, board attorney Fowler warned that the crash-and-burn might happen after bondholders quickly intervene if the college tries to remain open. Orsi, however, suggests a cleaner exit strategy. Given the millions pledged by would- be college-savers and that nine years have elapsed since the college’s last capital campaign (raising $110 million), Orsi believes supporters would gladly spend the $9 million it would take to pay off those bonds.

Shortly after the board’s March 3 closing announcement, D.C.-based business author Megan McArdle lauded the board’s decisiveness. Now, she wonders if they’ve been hardheaded.

“It’s like gamblers who double down,” says McArdle. “They get invested in being right.”

One person eager to help plan Sweet Briar 2.0 is Anna Rij, who was among the crowd at the Supreme Court hearing. A 2010 Sweet Briar graduate now working as a 4-H executive in Caroline County, Rij envisions the launch of an agriculture-technical program created with the help of Virginia Tech, the United States Department of Agriculture and the Virginia Cooperative Extension.

The program would use some of the 3,250-acre campus to feed the students while providing practical instruction and research opportunities.

“If we could incorporate agriculture into the campus, says Rij, “it would be a sustainable thing.”

But first, Rij and others need a win from the state’s high court.

As this story was going to press, the court issued a ruling in Amherst County Attorney Ellen Bowyer’s favor: a college can be both a trust and a corporation. With the case going back to the Amherst County Circuit Court, that’s welcome news for Save Sweet Briar suppporters because Judge James Updike has already issued two temporary injunctions and has indicated that he will take no actions to further the closing of the college.

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Tenacious board: Sweet Briar fight heads to state’s top court

The fight to save Sweet Briar College in Amherst heads to the Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday, June 4. Photo by Norm Shafer

As the fight over Sweet Briar College heads toward the Virginia Supreme Court, one key question swirls around the board, which recently voted to close the 114-year-old institution. The trustees find themselves opposed at practically every level by students, alumnae, faculty, and even elected officials. Three lawsuits have been filed, the judge hearing them says he’ll do nothing to assist the closing, and one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers claims that the school president could face personal liability for his actions. Why would any board, faced with such outrage and obstacles, persist in trying to close a beloved college?

Before seeking answers, let’s consider what happened the last time the leadership of a Virginia institution of higher learning became a national controversy. In 2012, a pair of University of Virginia board members confronted their president less than two years into her term and convinced her that she must resign or be fired. After widespread indignation—not to mention a governor’s threat to fire the entire board—one of the two plotters resigned, and the rest of the board quickly convened to unanimously reinstate President Teresa Sullivan. The entire drama played out in 18 days.

At Sweet Briar, the closure announcement was March 3, so the turmoil is about to enter its fourth month.

“Nobody understands why the hell they are doing this,” says Jay Orsi. “Ego and pride is about all I can hang it on at this point.”

Orsi is an Arkansas business owner whose wife graduated from Sweet Briar in 1991. With a masters degree in business and a concentration in finance, Orsi stoked the flames of alumnae anger last month on his blog, unsolicited.guru, by showing how Sweet Briar President James F. Jones Jr. appears to have overstated the level of deferred maintenance on the campus by a factor of eight.

Orsi is also the person who provides the most evidence-based explanation for the board’s decision—and its timing. By filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the issuing agency, the Amherst Industrial Development Authority, Orsi discovered that in 2014 Sweet Briar earned a year of breathing room on its most recent set of bonds.

Orsi says the bonds carry certain rules, called covenants, regarding cash reserves, that the College was on the verge of breaking. The most thorough solution, he says, would be raising $9 million to pay off those bonds, an effort he considers reasonable given that it’s been nine years since the College’s last capital campaign, which raised $110 million, and because recent donors have rallied to raise as much as $14 million to save the college since the closure was announced.

“It’s an all hands-on-deck thing,” says Orsi. “If they’d said that, money would have come out.”

Instead, Orsi says, the board botched its business plan by failing to hire an admissions director or a development director. Donations were flat, and enrollment fell.

“They did nothing with the extra time they bought,” says Orsi.

The board, however, claims that long-term trends include declining enrollment and revenue.

“Nothing about Sweet Briar’s financial situation has changed to alter the board’s decision that the College cannot afford to continue,” says spokesperson Christy Jackson. “As such, the board is trying to ensure an orderly wind-down of operations with the hope the College will be able to provide as much support as possible to students, faculty and staff, and to meet its obligation to creditors.”

It’s hard to say what creditors think since there’s no public list, but a majority of seniors participating in a pre-graduation survey asked for someone other than President Jones to hand them their diplomas. Likewise, the faculty who appeared at a recent meeting voted unanimously for the resignation of the entire board.

“The board members have principle and courage,” argues Woody Fowler, attorney for them in two lawsuits. “When the pressure comes in, you just don’t walk away, particularly when they don’t believe there’s another alternative out there.”

Early on, D.C.-based business-closing expert Megan McArdle lauded the board’s decisiveness in a Bloomberg essay. Now, she wonders if they’ve been hard-headed.

“They get invested in being right,” says McArdle. “It’s like gamblers who double down. You want to defend that with your life because you don’t want to admit you made a mistake.”

McArdle now joins those perplexed by the board’s unwillingness to step aside and let a new group try to create Sweet Briar 2.0.

“It’s really hard to back off of something that’s extreme,” says McArdle. “That’s a good thing if the school must be closed, but if the school can be saved it’s a terrible thing.”

McArdle contends that the board unwisely built an expensive set of on-campus townhouses and failed to enlist the help of the faculty in reducing the financial problems. She asserts that by sending students packing, the March 3 announcement has already had the intended effect.

“I don’t think the president and the board have covered themselves in glory,” says McArdle, “but that doesn’t mean I think the school can be saved.”

This Thursday, June 4, the Virginia Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in an appeal filed by Amherst County Attorney Ellen Bowyer, who is trying to save the school.

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“Never give in”: Polite defiance marks Sweet Briar graduation ceremony

Tears flowed at Sweet Briar College's 2015 commencement ceremony, which may be the last if plans to close the school go through. Photo: Ophelia Lenz

College presidents don’t usually skip commencement, but the leader’s absence is just one of the bumps endured by the Sweet Briar College Class of 2015, which graduated Saturday.

The largest earthquake in memory struck during their registration in August 2011. And now their college is going out of business—but not if the message delivered by the keynote speaker can prevail.

“Never give in,” implored Teresa Pike Tomlinson, quoting wartime words of Winston Churchill in her address to the class that could be the last.

Tomlinson, a 1987 graduate and the mayor of Columbus, Georgia, avoided making the kinds of direct criticisms that drove the college’s president away from the May 16 ceremony, according to a letter he sent to the Sweet Briar community days earlier. But by imploring the graduates to fight with “justifiable righteousness” and denouncing “false narratives” that excused the closing, she dove into the controversy that has swirled around this picturesque place for the last two and a half months.

“The truth is,” Tomlinson told the 117 graduates, “had you been at the table, had you been called to action, we would not be here today at the proposed end of an era.”

The era began in 1901 with a bequest of land from a wealthy woman honoring her deceased daughter. At around 3,250 acres, the tract contains 21 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places and sprawls over five square miles adjacent to a major highway, a combination that has provoked no shortage of nefarious theories.

While the college has attempted to quash talk of ulterior motives, it has declined to provide minutes of board meetings or even the board’s bylaws. “When they don’t give answers, people start making their own,” said Kelly O’Donnell, mother to a freshman from Sarasota, Florida.

Pinpointing the root of the college’s financial woes depends on the narrator. The board traces Sweet Briar’s troubles back to the 1970s when widespread coeducation opened doors far beyond rural Lynchburg. Many alumnae, however, allege that recent managers, including President James F. “Jimmy” Jones, hired last summer, made poor decisions.

Any death spiral accelerated after the March 3 announcement when the college told undergraduates to study elsewhere and rejected all freshman applications. A pair of temporary injunctions issued by a local judge to slow the wind-down hasn’t deterred Jones and the other 22 members of the board from continuing to fight for closure.

Their stance perplexes people like Anne Gray of Frederick, Maryland. Pausing from watching her daughter, Sarah, mingle with fellow graduates, she said reporters should follow the money.

“I have every faith that good will prevail,” said Gray. “We will defeat Jimmy Jones.”

Criticism of President Jones includes a no-confidence vote by the faculty and a student government survey finding that a majority of seniors wanted someone else to present their diplomas. Most recently, a music professor warned that Jones and his family would be berated at graduation.

The president of the senior class, Sadé Fountain, used part of her podium time to urge civility, and there were no obvious outbursts on the outdoor quad beyond respectful nylon bands of pink and green, the school colors, on professors’ sleeves.

“The Commencement ceremony is held by the president’s office,” said Fountain, “and we need to respect that.”

Sophomore Whitney Herndon, however, claimed that the school leaders have shown disrespect for their students.

“They teach us to have voices and be independent strong women,” said Herndon, “and then they try to smother that by not giving us a voice.”

As undergraduates scramble toward other colleges, Fountain acknowledged feeling “survivor’s guilt;” but students aren’t the only ones facing an uncertain future.

Between hugs from graduating seniors, assistant engineering professor Bethany Brinkman said that she plans to commute to a one-year position at James Madison University—an hour and a half away—with the hope that Sweet Briar will eventually reopen.

“We thought this would be forever,” said Brinkman.

Nearby, three employees folding graduation chairs said they haven’t yet found replacement jobs.

“We’re taking one day a time,” said Sharon Roberson, an 18-year veteran of Sweet Briar’s physical plant department. Roberson said that suddenly unleashing dozens of middle-age job-seekers into rural Amherst County to compete with graduating high school students will likely swell the ranks on public assistance.

For Calvin “Woody” Fowler, one of college’s lead attorneys, hand-wringing over the closing represents an “emotional” response to a simple math problem. He said the governing board, consisting mostly of alumnae, gain nothing from closing their alma mater.

“They would be delighted to keep the school open,” said Fowler, “but nobody has provided a plan.”

For Tomlinson, the graduation speaker, now is time for Sweet Briar women to stand up and fight.

“This is not about emotion,” Tomlinson said. “This is about people who are ready to step in to run Sweet Briar.”

 

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Sweet Briar supporters hear conspiracy talk from whistleblower turned PI

Private investigator Everett Stern claims Sweet Briar officials have engaged in fraud in their attempts to close the college. Photo: Hawes Spencer

The conspiracy theories swirling around the planned closure of Sweet Briar College found a voice last Saturday in the form of a financial whistleblower who says his private investigative firm has uncovered fraud and conspiracy.

“I see an injustice,” said Everett Stern. “The college can be saved.”

In his Saturday, May 9 meeting with students, faculty, staff and alumnae, Stern alleged that Interim President James F. Jones Jr. has been assisting Board Chair Paul Rice in an effort to downplay the college’s $84 million endowment and dupe other board members into enriching Rice’s associates and Rice’s family foundation.

Standing atop the steps of the college conference center, Stern likened Jones and Rice to maniacal pilots, willing to kill a viable institution.

“You’ve got to replace the pilots,” said Stern. “Get rid of Jones and Rice.”

Stern said he plans to put his specific allegations into a report posted online in about a week. Efforts to reach Rice were unsuccessful, but college spokesperson Christy Jackson offered a response.

“Everett Stern’s scurrilous accusations are outrageous and irresponsible,” said Jackson.

Four years ago, Stern became one of the top whistleblowers in the U.S. government’s money-laundering case against banking behemoth HSBC. While HSBC fired and sued Stern, who’d been working in its compliance department, evidence showed that the bank transferred billions in Mexican drug money, terrorist financing and other tainted funds, and the firm agreed to pay a staggering $1.92 billion fine.

After a brief stint waiting tables, Stern founded Tactical Rabbit, a firm he likens to a private Central Intelligence Agency. For Sweet Briar, he said, his work is volunteer. He revealed that he dispatched emissaries to act as interested land-buyers to learn what Sweet Briar officials might be trying to do with the 3,250-acre property on the outskirts of Lynchburg. He also said he has a mole on the Sweet Briar board, a group of “good people” who, he claimed, have been fed false information by their leaders. “I’ve spent 10,000 dollars of my own money on this,” said Stern, downplaying any connection to the fact that he’s currently seeking the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in his home state of Pennsylvania.

“I’m gonna be fighting for you until the day I die,” Stern told the crowd of about 60 people gathered at the college that has been educating women since 1901. “If this college goes down, then our freedoms are in jeopardy.”

Meanwhile, three lawsuits contesting the closing remain pending. And, in a “rolling discovery” agreement with the student plaintiffs, Sweet Briar must start producing documents May 15.

One person who will be closely watching the action is Teresa Pike Tomlinson, the mayor of Georgia’s second-largest city and a 1987 alumna who last month took the stand to testify against President Jones at an injunction hearing. Tomlinson revealed how Jones sent her a letter and an emissary to secure a million-dollar bequest less than a month before he announced the closure.

Perhaps Jones didn’t realize that this might upset her. Perhaps he forgot that he’d already announced that she would be the speaker at this year’s graduation, which is set for Saturday, May 16.